Cooper won’t block ACLU’s NC gay marriage ban case

The legal forum for challenging North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages is taking shape in a Greensboro federal court.

The ACLU and Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office said Friday that Cooper won’t fight the civil-rights organization expanding an existing lawsuit against a state law which says unmarried couples cannot be recognized as equal parents.

Cooper is defending the state in that lawsuit.

Spokeswoman Noelle Talley says Cooper won’t oppose expanding the case because both the marriage and equal adoption laws were headed to court, so combining them into one case will be more efficient.

The ACLU asked Roy Cooper to agree to allow an additional claim challenging the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples to be added to Fisher-Borne v. Smith, a lawsuit filed last year in Greensboro in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.